obvious grouping mechanisms. Further, for the last several millennia, there is overwhelming historical evidence that various groups have cooperated with and competed against each other; often for the survival of a group’s identity or its very existence for that matter. One need only search for current descendants of the Carthaginian Empire to understand the implications of among-group competition during recorded history. When Rome ultimately defeated Carthage on the battlefield, it took the extreme step of wiping all evidence of its once great adversary from the face of the earth and forcing its remnant survivors to scatter across the Roman Empire. While the physical representation of those survivors still exists within the collective gene pool, their representation in a social context no longer exists; it is extinct. So, since there appears to be solid evidence for among-group selection during recorded history, it also seems quite plausible that such mechanisms can be identified with the human species from the time that it emerged as unique, where surviving direct evidence of the competition is far less obvious.

The grouping mechanisms of humans seem to follow an evolutionary track comparable to that of the capabilities of the individual members of the species. Most basic is the social grouping necessary to allow the development of the person from infancy to adulthood. The infant child is incapable of supporting itself and, in isolation, the infant places extreme demands on its mother, or to any adult the child bonds to for elemental life support. In fact, it is highly likely that the species could not have survived without social mechanisms in place to support the mother and infant child, at least until the child is well past infancy. The basic social grouping that is readily identifiable is the nuclear family; mother, father, siblings and the extended family that can grow up around this core through multi-generational association.

At some point in its development, the family (or perhaps an extended family) reaches a threshold of size due to the sustenance limitations within the ecosystem that the family inhabits. That is, the physical interaction characteristics of the individuals with each other and with the ecosystem can only support groups of a given size. The makeup of the physical ecosystem obviously has a very significant impact on the family, and the evolutionary environment presented to the establishment of more complex groups. So, let’s look in a bit more detail at the groups that we recognize within the human species.

Individuals and the Family

The African Wild Dog (Lycaon pictus) pup is born after a gestation period of 70 days. The pup is weaned from its mother’s milk at about 10 weeks. At three months, the mother and pups abandon the den and the pups begin to run with the pack. At 10 months of age, pups can kill easy prey and by 14 months they are fully capable of fending for themselves. They can join the rest of the pack in bringing down prey many times their own size. In comparison, during its first month, a human baby can not support its own head and it can only see objects a few inches in front of its face. It can mimic certain behaviors of another individual, usually its mother, if they are observable. At three months it can roll from its back to its side and it finally discovers its hands and feet. The skull of the infant is segmented and loosely connected at birth, enabling the head to deform as necessary in order to fit through the birth canal of the mother. After birth, the skull segments become rigidly connected in place, and the brain continues to grow. Its growth provides for a geometric expansion of synaptic connections, a process that lasts until about 30 months. At this point, the human infant has established a preponderance of the physical and mental characteristics of the human species. The pup is an adult at one and a half years while the infant is a fairly fully functional human at three years. However, it will take another three to five years before the young human can effectively care for itself within the wider world. It will be 14 to 18 years or so before

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